Ain’t nothing a little sunshine, ocean water and fresh air can’t fix…right?

How I’m feeling: Worried if I will have enough energy this Summer season to be able to give Leia the incredible outdoorsy summer experience she deserves.

It was the beginning of February 2014. It had been too long since I treated myself to a vacation. In fact, it had been more than 5 years. Too long, I know. I will never let that happen again. I was spinning – and needed out. I needed to let things process from the breakup. I like to deal with my S%&$ immediately.

And so, I started asking around on Facebook for great vacation deals and messaged some friends to see if they were available and up for some sun, surf, skin and heat. I knew it wouldn’t have been a tough sell. Toronto friends, you know what I’m talking about. Minus -30?!

I promised myself that if nobody would have been available to join me, that I’d go anyways. It was just something I had to do for myself. I had to do SOMETHING for myself at this point.

After dance rehearsal one day, my dance mate Danielle Thompson turned to me and said “Hey, I saw your Facebook post. Keep me posted on if you find anything good” I spent just a few days looking for something and I found us a sweet 1-week deal to Varadero, Cuba. Normally not my kind of vacation but all I was looking for was a quick “I need to get the hell out of here” escape. And just like that, we were off. It was the easiest vacation decision I had ever made. I guess it really was the right time to do it.

At this point, I had a little bit of a dry cough. In fact, my dry cough and a slight feeling of a little lump in my throat started when my ex boyfriend and I broke up. I just chalked it up to stress because things like that happen when you’re stressed out. I figured that it was something a little ocean seawater, beach fun and fresh air could fix.I felt no other symptoms. Literally, just a dry cough and a little feeling of something in my throat that came and went.

The vacation was INCREDIBLE and very much so needed but we noticed that my cough did not go away. At one point, we figured it may have just been allergies to indoor things as I would cough more so at night time in our hotel room than the daytime while we were out and about. I made sure to keep hydrated and popped a couple of allergy pills. While there was no real improvement, there was no way I would have let an annoying little dry cough rob me from my vacation and “me-time”.

So, it wasn’t just a dry cough and it wasn’t allergies. More on this when I describe how a couple of dance rehearsal sessions went when I had arrived back in Toronto.